Non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredi leaders are clear. Israel’s new haredi-free
government, finally formed yesterday and due to be sworn in next week,
isn’t just more Zionist than many of Israel’s previous governments
formed over the past 35 years with non-Zionist haredi parties – it is a
“government of evil.”
Haredim Lash Out At Israel’s “Government Of Evil”
Shmarya Rosenberg • FailedMessiah.com
Non-hasidic Ashkenazi haredi leaders are clear. Israel’s new haredi-free government, finally formed yesterday and due to be sworn in next week, isn’t just more Zionist than many of Israel’s previous governments formed over the past 35 years with non-Zionist haredi parties – it is a “government of evil.”
Unleashing what the Jerusalem Post called “a torrent of invective,” haredi rabbis, politicians and media lashed out at Israel’s new government and at the politicians who comprise it.
Haredi leader Rabbi Aharon Leib Shteinman called the Yesh Atid party’s founder and head Yair Lapid “an evil [man], who grew up with an evil father.” Lapid’s late father was former MK and head of the Shinui secularist part Yosef (Tommy) Lapid. Shteinman also told MKs from the Degel Hatorah faction of the haredi United Torah Judaism (UTJ) party that haredim were being persecuted.
“What do they care if a haredi person wants to remain haredi?” Shtreinman said, noting that it is impossible for a haredi man to remain haredi in the army.
Other haredi politicians lashed out with personal insults at HaBayit HaYehudi head Naftali Bennett, who is Zionist Orthodox, and at other Yesh Atid’s Rabbi Shai Piron, who is also Zionist Orthodox.
But most of the invective was saved for the new goverment as a whole.
UTJ MK Uri Maklev was quoted in Degel HaTorah’s mouthpiece, the haredi daily Yated Ne’eman, labeling the new government “an axis of hatred and persecution.”
“This axis is itself based on a campaign of systematic and foundational hostility and harassment to the Torah world, the haredi education system, the holy things of Israel and everything beloved of Judaism. Its partners established a covenant betraying God and His Torah,” Maklev reportedly said.
UTJ’s MK Moshe Gafni called the new government one of the worst Israel has ever had spiritually and materially.
But Degel HaTorah’s mouthpiece Yated Ne’eman’s front page headline encapsulated the Ashkenazi haredi perception of the new government perfectly.
“Government of Evil,” Yated Ne’eman’s headline reads.